MOD TORONTO: Imperial Oil’s Parthenon of petroleum

To coincide with the cover section of Spacing’s summer 2013 issue, we bring you a series of posts by local architect Robert Moffatt that examine Modernist buildings in Toronto.

Imperial Oil’s Ontario regional headquarters was truly a building of the Automotive Age, meant to be perceived not by pedestrians strolling the sidewalk, but from behind the wraparound windshield of a Buick Electra at speed. Completed in 1962 on a verdant hillside at 825 Don Mills Road, overlooking the busy intersection of Don Mills Road and Eglinton Avenue, the Imperial Oil building was as long as a football field and sleekly clad in an endless grid of sculpted white precast panels.

John B. Parkin Associates designed Imperial Oil with Classical formality and the rectilinear lines of the International Style. The ground floor was recessed some 20 feet and clad in dark plum-coloured brick, making the building appear to hover above the site. Exposed structural columns defined a broad south-facing podium, fronted with reflecting pools, fountain jets and a row of spotlights to light up the facade at night. The main lobby, accessed from a massive surface parking lot at the rear, offered views of traffic whizzing by through floor-to-ceiling glass. A technical innovation was neoprene seals between the window glass and precast panels, used for the first time in Canada, which eliminated bulky metal window frames. Imperial Oil was awarded a 1964 Massey Medal for Architecture and an honourable mention at the Sao Paulo International Biennale of Architecture and Design.

The building was not to last, however. Imperial Oil moved out in the early 1990s and, with the commercial office market flatlining, the building was summarily demolished. Its site is now the parking lot of a big-box supermarket. Only the crumbling stub of the service drive remains.